Monday, July 20, 2015

Monday Random Thoughts

- I'll start this monday random thoughts with a public service announcement.

- Maybe you knew it already but I didn't.

- The new missions that require a 675 item level do not require your followers to have a 675 item level only.

- You have to have a 675 item level as well.

- I'm talking about the mount, the medallion of the legion, things like that.

- Was wondering why some of my characters got those missions and others did not.

- Chalked it up to random being random.

- Then someone said maybe your character needs to be 675 too.

- And I tested that this weekend.

- Last night I went into a mythic dungeon on my rogue at a 673 item level.

- Won two pieces and left the dungeon at a 675 item level.

- Checked my mission table and, surprise, those missions were now there but were not before I went into the dungeon.

- Seems like proof enough to me.

- Have another character at 671, will get them to 675 as well to check.

- But thinking back, the characters I got those missions on were all over 675 and all the characters under 675 have never had one.

- So it really does make sense even if it is with anecdotal evidence.

- Speaking of my rogue, I played it a bit this weekend.

- Managed to get it a couple of pieces of gear, those two mythic dungeon pieces as mentioned, the 680 ring and one empowered piece I upgraded because it had okay stats.

- Went from 670 to 675.

- And even playing it a bit this weekend I still have no freaking clue what I am doing.

- Did all the dungeons you need to do to start the legendary quest line when I was at 670 with a 655 and 670 weapon.

- Yeah I know I am really slow with starting it but I suck on my rogue and I did not feel like subjecting random people to my poor play.

- Now that I was a higher item level I felt I could contribute enough to do them.

- So I figured, what the hell.

- On trash mobs I was doing between 12K and 18K.

- See, I suck.

- On bosses however I was between 26K and 30K.

- Give me a single target mob that will last for more than a few seconds and I can do okay, but I suck at AoE situations.

- I read how to AoE as an assassination rogue, I just do not get it.

- Or I do get it, I just can not do it.

- Reminds me of the wrath lock.

- I could never do good dungeon numbers as affliction because by the time I was putting my dots on the second target all the others were dead.

- Same goes for the rogue, by the time I build up enough combo points to put rupture on one target all of them are dead.

- How exactly am I supposed to keep rupture up on all targets when I can't even put it up on one?

- I could just spam fan of knives I guess.

- I think from now I will just do what I do as marksman and do single target.

- Let the epeen points for high numbers go to the other, more capable of AoE, classes.

- Maybe they need to feel good about themselves anyway.

- So I will let them.

- But I still would like to learn to get better at it.

- I hate being melee, I hate being a rogue even more.

- But I keep playing it expansion after expansion.

- I keep trying to get better at it.

- And that is because I am bad at it.

- I like the challenge.

- When going to do the mythic dungeon I asked, do you think I can get away with bringing my crappy rogue.

- And someone on voice chat said, you always say you suck on your rogue but you do just fine, better than the people you will find in pugs.

- I said, that is not the point. I judge me based on me. I know I can do better and I know I am doing poorly, so I suck. Who cares if I am better than some random pugs. I am not competing against them, I am competing against myself.

- See, that is the key for me, I want to do better for me.

- I do not care if I beat random joe blow in a dungeon, he does not matter.

- I care if I am doing what I believe to be competitive numbers while still obeying the mechanics of the fight.

- Do I need to be a better rogue being I do not intend to raid on him? No.

- Do I want to be a better rogue because I find it a fun challenge to get better at something I know I am bad at? Yes.

- Doing good is not about what content you do, it is about having fun.

- Even if I will never be a mythic raider on my rogue that does not mean I can not try to get my skill level to mythic skill with it.

- I enjoy knowing I am doing as well as I am able and find it fun, even if all I ever do is simple stuff on it.

- I do not have fun doing so poorly.

- That is why I always end up giving up on my rogue.

- Unlike my hunter who even if I am having a bad day I have fun with it, I do not have fun playing the rogue, so I give up when I hit a bump in the road.

- If my rogue ran into the gearing issues me hunter did, I would drop it in a heart beat.

- I do think I could do better with better weapons.

- I'll ask the people here if they know, is at my best 18K trash and 30K boss at 670 item level with a 655 and 670 weapon good?

- Doesn't seem so to be to me.

- 30K single target for the gear seems acceptable even if kind of low, but the 18K AoE numbers really seem low.

- Speaking of my hunter I did a heroic BRF run figuring I might be able to snag some 685 tier pieces to replace my 670 ones until I get the four piece from T18.

- Used a coin on the tier bosses and gruul for a chance at the tier pieces and the BoE neck.

- Figured what the hell, spend 270 gold on a coin for a chance to get and sell a 15K piece.

- Guess what happened after months and months of not winning anything on a coin?

- I won on all the coins I used except 1.

- Bad part is I won crap I did not want, but on well, at least I finally won.

- I would have preferred to, you know, win something I wanted, but I guess beggars can't be choosers.

- I did manage to get one tier piece however, so that is something I guess.

- My first heroic tier piece from last tier comes a month after the new tier is out.

- How depressing.

- And I have still not seen a single weapon drop for a hunter on personal or on master looter the entire expansion long.

- I am convinced that hunter weapons do not exist this expansion.

- I swear if it were not for the crafted weapon I would have quit the game already.

- You can't raid without gear and a weapon is the most important piece of it.

- It should never be this hard to get one.

- It was nice to get a chance to do marksman on these fights.

- Had only tried it a handful of times when it was current.

- I did well, 97 - 99th percentile, on most fights like usual.

- But I did dreadful on three fights.

- Two were my own fault, numbers wise.

- We had a good AoE group so I did not switch to barrage for beastlord and operator.

- This left me in the 76th percentile on both fights.

- Still think I could have done better even if I did not try to hog AoE.

- I went full single target and used both like a moving target dummy.

- Hey, I was there to practice so practice I did.

- The third fight I could chalk up to doing boats on maidens because MM is killer on that fight with always having two targets but that is not why I did poorly.

- I did poorly because I was one of only two DPS up at the end.

- Do you know how freaking long it takes to down those three maidens when there are only 2 damage dealers up in the end phase?

- My numbers dropped like a rock as the fight drew on.

- Funny part is even with a little more gear than I had last time I did it and supposedly a better spec for single target, I did not break any of my personal records on any fight.

- Not even the perfect single target fight in there.

- Closest I came was gruul where I did 54K and my record is 56K.

- Guess that just means I need a lot of work as MM.

- Practice, practice, practice.

- That is how you get better.

- Wrath time walker dungeons were awesome on so many levels.

- I am going to write a post just about it.

- Let me just sum it up as saying I have never had so much fun wiping in my entire life.

- It was nice to see these bone heads that keep saying that wrath dungeons were a joke and you can just pull full rooms and AoE them down die a horrible death trying to do just that.

- People seem to remember the end of wrath when we massively over geared it and think that wrath was always like that.

- Um... no.

- I will have to make a post on it, it will be fun for all involved, except for all the idiot tanks.

- Speaking of time walkers, found a new time walker bug that should be of particular interest to hunters.

- And I guess warlocks, but I did not test it for locks.

- If you are in a time walker dungeon dismiss your pet and recall it back out as soon as you leave.

- Why you ask?

- When you zone out your stats go back to normal but fully remains level 80.

- Yeap, he is still level 80 with level 80 stats until you dismiss him and call him back out.

- On my horde hunter I went from a time walkers right into LFR.

- I am BM on that hunter and after the first trash mob I see I am doing 8K.

- WTF, I was not even doing 8K the second I hit 100, how can I be that low.

- Dismissed my pet, called it back out, there we go, back up to 28K instead.

- Interesting, so I tried it again just to test it out.

- From a timer walker into an LFR, same thing.

- From a time walker into a training dummy, same thing.

- From a time walker into tanaan, same thing.

- Maybe it is just this hunter, so I went to my other hunter, who is MM but I did a time walker as BM and tested it, same thing.

- Yeap, this is an absolute bug, not a one time thing.

- Maybe fluffy catches up to you, in time, but as soon as you come out, fluffy is still a level 80 fluffy.

- Ah, wasn't fluffy cute when he was just an itty bitty pup?

- I did have fun doing some of the dungeons with guild members that were not around during wrath.

- Me and a healer from guild were reminiscing about the good old days of wrath.

- Going back and doing them again I realize that I liked these dungeons still.

- Not because it was the first time I did dungeons on a regular basis, not because late in the expansion they added the group finder which made it easier than spaming trade.

- I liked them because they were better than any dungeons that have come since.

- It really is that simple.

- Would love to see today's generation do hall of reflection at a scaled down item level.

- I can see the forum posts crying for it to be nerfed already and it doesn't even exist.

- You can tell the scaling has changed a hell of a lot since then.

- I can do 13K-15K on bosses and those were the types of numbers I was doing in dungeons at the end of the expansion, not at the beginning when I was around a 160 item level, which is what we are scaled to.

- So their scaling technology failed, miserably, to say the very least.

- At least it failed if what they wanted to do was to give the feeling of them being an at item level feeling because at item level those bosses did not die as fast as the do now.

- So we are doing end of wrath number with beginning of wrath item level with around middle of wrath difficultly.

- And pugs are still wiping like crazy.

- It is a big middle finger to all those people that kept saying wrath was super easy dungeons.

- As I love to say, of course they were super easy at the end.

- We over geared them insanely, which is what is supposed to happen to dungeons, they get easy when you over gear them.

- Surprise surprise.

- I'll leave more rambling for the post on it.

- But I have to end it here with one tank I got in a random.

- Zones in, starts talking about how wrath dungeons are just faceroll and he is going to pull fast so we should try to keep up.

- He preceded to die on the first pull, instantly, the second pull, instantly, and the third pull, instantly, and then he said, maybe the people on the forums lied, I had never tanked these but they don't seem faceroll to me, these guys hurt.

- No shit Sherlock.

- Someone that had tanked them before knows that all the face roll crap people post on the forums is a lie, or under special circumstances like having a full group of raid geared people that are good players at the end of the expansion.

- I just loved him contently getting one shot by trash, it was priceless.

- The healer said after the second time he did that, maybe try using some of your cooldowns once in a while.

- I laughed.

- So many fun times, so many fun wipes, and I got a laugh out of everyone raging.

- Good time, good times.

- It just makes me love wrath heroics even more now.

- I was afraid my memories of them would be tainted, but I feel they have been decently served.

- They added the bag with the normal mode HFC cache to get more people to do them.

- Guess they did not have enough participation last time for the BC one.

- Funny part is, I did less this time around than I did last time around.

- The bribe bag did not make me want to do it more.

- I actually did not even do it on all my characters that would have wanted the bag and would have wanted the coin.

- Even if I liked the dungeons, even if I wanted to do them, I hate the limited time nature of it.

- But I will say I agree with the limited time nature of it even if I do not like it.

- Should be a full week, not just weekends, but still, limited time events do make more sense.

- I was not about to do them and only them all weekend long just for the sake of a coin and a bag with gear even if I wanted those things.

- I wonder what the participation level of these is.

- And why no achievements for completing a time walking version of the dungeons.

- We have an achievement for doing dungeons on normal, doing them on heroic, doing them in challenge mode, and doing them on mythic, why no achievement for doing them in time walker?

- From the looks of people in guild there was always someone looking for a group for them.

- So I would guess participation levels had to be good.

- I finally got to face that one super rare in tanaan.

- His name begins with an X, forgot it otherwise and do not feel like looking it up at the moment.

- You need to be exalted with your faction (prophet or headhunters) and the order of the awakened as well as have the achievement for killing all the rares to get to him.

- I had read that as soon as you had all three if you used your master treasure hunter item you would get teleported to him but it did not work that way.

- I used it dozens of times since I had all the requirements and never got teleported to him.

- Then yesterday I go to T2 and use it a soon as I get there and poof I am teleported to him.

- Woot, now it is time to get my predator title.

- I ask in guild if anyone needs him as he is finally up.

- One person met all the criteria but when he used it he was not teleported to him.

- Wonder why?

- I thought as long as he was up people would get teleported to him.

- Oh well, instead of having me wait 15 minutes he tells me to go for it, he will get it another time.

- I start the pew pew and see someone else zone in.

- The second they zone in he knocks them off the platform.

- I laugh.

- Another person teleports in, same thing happens, he does not even get to get a hit in, he just zones in and goes flying off.

- I laugh again.

- I don't mean to be a meanie but it is kind of funny.

- I see a third person zone in, boomkin and he moonfires and then gets blown off.

- Wonder if he will get the achievement, he did get a shot in.

- I finish him off, of course not getting blown off, I am a hunter I know how to handle things like that.

- Also, I was in the fight, not surprised by it.

- Maybe if I were like them and surprised by it I would have been knocked off to.

- He drops no loot but he does give you the achievement for killing him and the predator title for killing him.

- Glad to finally get that out of the way.

- So the only T2 thing left for me to do is collect 5000 claws so I can get the meta achievement.

- I just have not been in a grinding mood to do it yet.

- Some day.

- I have over 270K apexis crystals, feels weird saying that I am not in a grinding mood.

- But you do not really need to grind them, just kill stuff and they come.

- I have well over 10,000 primal spirits now and have no clue what to use them on.

- Any suggestions?

- Was thinking about buying savage bloods and making some 675 gear for alts that might be up and coming later.

- But unless I can start getting fel blight cheap it would not be worth it.

- Would be better with the 695 T2 gear over the 675 gear.

- What do you think the chances of them ever adding fel blight for sale with primal spirits?

- Yeah, me too, I don't think they will ever do that.

- Wish they did, I would have 715 on all my alts, even the ones I do not use, if that were the case.

- I got the quest for the black market auction house on a couple of my characters.

- What a complete waste of time.

- Let me explain.

- I get the quest and go do it, running around collecting something, talk to someone, you know the standard routine, then return to my garrison..

- When I get to my garrison it auto completes.

- Now what?

- I run around looking for the black market auction house and can't find it anywhere.

- There is no follow up quest either, so it has to be here right?

- Off to wowhead I go after a couple of minutes running around looking for a new building or something and not finding it.

- Ah, there is now a panda standing near my mailbox.

- I had not noticed her.

- She is the black market auction house, just another NPC standing around.

- Can you say boring?

- So I talk to her and see what they have.

- As an impulse buy I figured might as well buy one of the containers and take a chance.

- It is on short time and only 20K, so I will go for it.

- How do you bid from there?

- I could not figure it out.

- Clicked on every item, could not find a bid option for anything.

- Are you telling me this just shows me what is at the black market auction house and doesn't actually let me bid?

- What freaking use is this?

- If I really was the type that cared what was at the black market auction house I would be going there to look to begin with.

- I would have wasted some gold as an impulse buy out of boredom while in my garrison but I am not going to travel all the way to nagrand to bid.

- I am not really interested in buying it, I was only going to buy it because it was right there.

- Either there is a way to buy from your garrison and I over looked it, like I over looked the new panda chick even standing there, or it is just for show.

- If it is just for show I say it was a lame addition to the game.

- Blizzard would have sucked 20K out of game from me if I could have bid on it from my garrison.

- I am sure I might have even impulse bid other times as well, as I am sure other people would too.

- But if you can not bid from your garrison, there is no reason to have a black market auction house in your garrison at all.

- Like I said, if I cared so much what was in it I would go there to look.

- What a waste of an addition to the game.

- Sure hope they did not waste more then 15 seconds coding this because that is all it is worth as it is.

- If they are going to add worthless NPCs to the garrison I have a great idea for one they could add.

- A quest line that adds someone that will be the trade in vendor for all tier tokens thought history.

- Being it is your garrison they would only trade for your tier token of course, but at least now if you wanted to collect those sets you would not need to run all over the world to different vendors everywhere to exchange them.

- You could do it from one simple vendor in your garrison.

- Now if they were going to add another worthless NPC to my garrison that would be a more welcome one than a representative from the black market auction house that will not even take my bids.

- I'd have no use for the tier turn in vendor, just as I have no use for the look at the black market NPC, but at least the tier turn in vendor would have an actual purpose where I do not really see the purpose of the black market NPC.

- Maybe they are guessing people will look there and travel to bid if something interests them.

I started doing that in the later runs, saw slightly better AoE numbers but nothing even close to my single target. It feels as I am losing over all numbers when I try to AoE. Might be better sticking to one mob completely. But I feel weird not doing "something" in an AoE situation.

I miss affliction, have not used it since cataclysm and it was my favorite spec.

I pointed him out that I don't even have time to apply the DoTs at least for 1 mob before all mobs are dead, and told him to wait for somone who lives beyond 3 seconds. And lo and behold, I've shown a great result at a boss fight.

Affliction is the perfect spec for me. I feel that Destruction is basically a Fire Mage and I don't like shape shifting, so no Demonologist for me. Affliction feels slow, vile and cunning. One of most pleasurable raiding experiences among my toons.

I like it best too for the same reasons but I did have fun as destro in mists because it was so OP and quite honestly having an alt be insanely OP and not take a high skill cap to get there is pretty fun. That is why I always liked the wrath arcane mage, hit 2 over and over and done.

Sunday was my last day in World of Warcraft. I had everything all taken care of as I'd made the decision long ago but was just waiting on my time to run out got a good transmog went to dalaran as high as I could go and logged out on my favorite mount. I ended a 6 year guild and a raid team that had gotten every ahead of the curve even BRF's I just couldn't any more support the bad decisions blizzard has been making.

That is where I will surely end up. I swear I am still sitting there with one foot out of the door. And with the declining ability of my raid team and my lack of desire to server transfer, moving to a new game is looking more and more inviting.

Rub in that valor system why don't you. You know that will be the key reason I move on.

I want a button to toggle to turn off those npc's in my garrison. In the beginning, it was nice, but then you have to have guards - why? Because Blizzard listen to those dummies that wanted them. Then you have to have pets running all over the place - why? Because Blizzard listen to those dummies that wanted them. Then with patch 6.2, now you got giant trees and who knows what else running all over the place making lots n lots of noise - why? Because Blizzard listen to those dummies that wanted them. You know, that 10% who don't think their shyt stinks and are the best. Yeah, a toggle to turn all that crap off. And that fookin' Nat Prangle. He comes a'ridin' up, a whipping and a whomping, scaring the crap out of me and does NOTHING! No matter where I am fishing in Draenor, he comes. Crap, why? Because Blizzard listen to those dummies that wanted them.

Speaking of dungeons, a couple friends and I tried one from a quest in her garrison - hmmm, it is in the shadowmoon burial grounds have to kill Ner'zhul. Yeah right. I am sorry, you and maybe the 10% can kill him on regular, but we tried and tried and tried 5 times.

After a 250gold repair bill, I said no more. we went to our garrison and deleted the quest. All for only 61g and 125 garrison resources. I can think of something more fun, like putting a 9 volt battery to my tongue. What's with all elite lvl 101 to 102 trash mobs and major bosses? On a regular dungeon?

Now I will admit that my female friend is not up to par as a locky (she does panic (a lot :-( ), but then she is 70 years old.). But her hubby and I as hunters can hold our on, until we get to that last boss. Is this what you mean by the lack of blizzard thinking?

Well that's about it. Granddaughter #1 turned 18 yesterday, Granddaughter #2 learned a new phrase to drive her mom nuts with "hold your horses". My work is done.

I want to be able to evict that giant tree that always seems to stand wherever it is I need to be at that particular moment. He annoys me.

Nat always scare me too. I swear I always think it is someone coming to fish out of my pool.

The key to Nerzul is killing one of the skulls on the bone wall and then people getting through it. Works better if someone puts a marker on the skull. It is one of those bosses were working as a team is almost required unless you have one DPS so powerful they can take down a skull by themselves. In most groups all three DPS need to be on the same one or it is a wipe.

Maybe you accidentally had it at heroic. That could be the reason. Either that or that dungeon does not have a lower version only a level 100 version, there are a few like that but do not remember whichs ones those are.

Blizzard is making things for the cutting edge only and forgetting it takes all types, including those 70 and those with slower reflexes. What I am saying is that there is no real content for them and they are not looking at the broader picture.

If they made content more welcoming they might lose the 1% but they would retain some of the 99% a lot longer than scaring them away, which is what they are doing now.

Congrats on your granddaughter's #1s 18th, that is a big number, she is an adult now and even more congrats on having granddaughter #2 drive her mom crazy. Now you can get back at her mon for what her mom probably did to you. lol Being a grand parent can be fun.

Now that my T2 grinding is out of the way and I have Pathfinder ready for "that" patch, I joined in Guild runs in the Timewalking dungeons at the weekend.

Superb.

I started playing WoW about half way through MoP, so I only saw these dungeons on achievement runs, or when I was being dragged through at warp speed by my fellow level 90 guildies who needed my Fury Warrior in the raid team asap.

Doing them "properly" with fellow guildies was an absolute joy. I didn't even know about the HFC cache until the end, and I got something I could use on both characters which was unexpected and nice.

The WotLK dungeons show that you don't need OTT mechanics to create good fights. They were challenging but not insanely stupid. And beautifully designed of course.

There's a lot in 6.2 I like, so I'm happy to give credit where it's due. Our guild has come alive since this patch hit, whether it's grinding stuff in T2 in groups, or doing dungeon runs like this.

The game feels social again, an aspect that Garrisons tore from the game.

I loved the design of the wrath dungeons. It seems, as an expansion as a whole, to be the best job they ever did.

My guild saw a minor uptick in people being on when 6.2 came out but it went away fast. A few more people have come back in the last weeks that left in cataclysm. Don't know if they will stay, but they are really hating it thus far. Too much has changed for them. One guy was asking where to get the belt buckle pattern, I said there are none any more, he asked where to do this, I said gone, where to do that, changed. Etc. He is really hating all the changes, they changed too much. For people coming back, this is a huge hurdle. I do not see him staying around.

So they might have added some good stuff, but the bad stuff is what people always seem to remember and I still say the bad stuff greatly outweighs the good stuff. Even more so now seeing it from the eyes of people returning hating all the changes that were made.

I hate RNG design. I probably hate it an unhealthy amount. If the next expansion is like this one in that context, I don't think I am going to stay around for it.

As one of my commenters posted the other day, they have now quit the game and moved on to FF 14. The reason being is that FF 14 added the best things about wow that wow took away from us. One being valor gear.

Ah, the beauty of no random. You know what you are working for. You know how long it will take you to get it. You know the stats it will have on it. No random what so ever.

I must say, if I quit wow and go to FF 14, that will be the reason. Less RNG. A feeling of earning your gear and not lucking into it, and most of all, a system were I can see myself working toward something instead of waiting on luck to give it to me.

I've spent many many hours doing all that and still have not gotten enough to upgrade all my stuff. We are talking WAY to many hours. The drop rate sucks. I am jealous of people who say they get 30 and hour.